1784 ARBORETUM AND FRUTICETUM. PART III. 
soil for the oak, by deeply trenching it, by planting acorns, and not plants 3 
and by keeping them pruned till they arrive at a proper height, double the 
quantity of timber may be obtained in about 50 years, that is now produced 
in 100. Mr. Yates’s mode of cultivation (for an account of which he received 
a premium from the Society of Arts) will be found in a succeeding paragraph. 
(See Gent. Mag., vol. lxxiv., for 1804, p. 626.) 
The following table of the progressive growth of nine oaks in the New 
Forest, was communicated by T. Davies, Esq., of Portway House, Wiltshire :— 
The circumference taken in 
inches at 6ft. from the ground. 
1814. 1816. 1818. 1820. 1822 
No.1. 572 58 582-59 59. 
' No. 2. 631 ra 662 or eat Average increase in 8 years, 3$ in, per 
5 Trees planted J xo 3. 823 85 852 863 873 |tree in circumference. 
' 120 years, No.4 41 422 428 408 438 Increase of timber in 12ft. in length 
Noob Gl 63 638 67i J of trunk, 1 ft. 9 in. 
Aggregate 307 : 3263 
4 Trees planted, 
No.7. 274 283 29% Q9% 32 tree in circumference. 
60 years. 0. 8. 
283 293 303 314 322 Increase of timber in 12 ft. in length 
No.9. 333 3 35z 372 39 of trunk, 1 ft. 7 in. 
Aggregate 117] 138¢ 
3 6. 282 303 32 332 353 f Average increase in § years, 53 in, per 
Relative Growth of Oak Wood, as compared with that of other Trees. The result 
of observations by Vancouver in Hampshire, as to the relative growth of wood 
in that county, was, taking the trees at 10 years’ growth, and fixing the oak 
as a standard, as follows :— Oak, 10; elm, 16; ash, 18; beech, 20; white 
poplar (P. alba), 30. It will thus appear that the oak, which is the slowest- 
growing forest tree indigenous to Britain, increases only at the rate of one 
third part of the white poplar, which is the most rapid-growing indigenous 
forest tree in Britain. 
The growth of the oak, as compared with that of the larch, is exemplified 
in a tree of each growing at Wimbush, in Essex. In 1792, the oak, which is 
called Young’s Oak, at 5ft. from the ground, was 8 ft. 53 in. in girt; anda 
larch, at the same place, only 12 years old, at the same height from the ground, 
girted 2 ft. 4in. In 1805, 13 years afterwards, the oak had increased only 
44 in. in girt, while the larch had increased 2ft.9in. (Young’s Essez, ii. 
- 151. 
f Pacis Allusions. The most celebrated poetical description of the oak, 
as well as, perhaps, one of the oldest, is that of Virgil in the second Georgic, 
which has been thus rendered by Dryden : — 
‘€ Jove’s own tree, 
That holds the woods in awful sovereignty, 
Requires a depth of lodging in the ground, 
And, next the lower skies, a bed profound. 
High as his topmost boughs to heaven ascend, 
So low his roots to hell’s dominion tend ; 
Therefore nor winds, nor winter’s rage, o’erthrows 
His bulky body, but unmoved he grows. 
For length of ages lasts his happy reign, 
And lives of mortal men contend in vain. 
Full in the midst of his own strength he stands, 
Stretching his brawny arms, and leafy hands: 
His shade protects the plains, his head the hills commands.” 
The following lines are from the neid : — 
** As when the winds their airy quarrel try, 
Jostling from every quarter of the sky, 
This way and that, the mountain oak they bend, 
His boughs they shatter, and his branches rend ; 
With leaves and falling mast they spread the ground ; 
The hollow valleys echo to the sound : 
Unmoved the royal plant their fury mocks, 
Or, shaken, clings more closely to the rocks ; 
For as he shoots his towering head on high, 
So deep in earth his fixed foundations lie.” 
VirGit, 42n., Dryden’s trans, 
a 
